(IMAGE: The New York Times)

New databases are enabling historians and descendants of slaves to piece together family trees and identify patterns in the lives of runaways. These searchable listings indicate how often slaves managed to leave with their children, how some were able to pass for white and how many recaptured slaves kept trying to escape.

The databases of digital archives play an important part in addressing gaps in the historical narrative(s) offering more insight into difficult histories. This article mentions two online projects, Runaway Slaves in Britain (University of Glasgow) and Freedom University (Cornell University).

Read full article on the The New York Times.